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All discussion is based on certain presumptions and if they fail this method becomes a hurdle in life of an individual. I say this because this method depends on many intermediate equipment to first take the data and then eventually process it and then send it to the server, then further process to compare at the computer software, then the data returned to the end point from where the test is performed. Failure of any one of these very high-tech system will refuse to identify the person as that. This will create untold problems for the person. This is the reason why such a high-tech system should not be applied in under developed countries such as India. To compare this so called super specialty method with conventional photo identity, we see that in photo method no involvement of any intermediate steps. This makes the system more foolproof and safe for individuals.
Moreover, we notice that in many cases finger vein design changes due to diseases such as skin diseases. Accidents, other causes can deform that design. We also notice that Eris design also changes as person becomes older. Moreover we do not have any conclusive evidence to say that no two persons have same Eris and finger prints. Everything is based on many unproven presumptions. Therefore, first let us prove these presumptions and then accept it or not. I firmly believe this method is being promoted for the business involved in selling finger prints and Eris. Pathare Prabhu (talk) 06:57, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Someone from USA should write a paragraph about biometry and gun control. For example, if all law enforcement firearms had palm readers or RFID tags against unauthorized use, two recent spree killing could have been prevented (the Fulton courtroom massacre and the Red Chippewa school massacre). Both places the madmen used police weapons. There would be no legal or constitutional problems with bio-authenticating weapons used by the authorities.

What if the palm reader or RFID tag failed? What if the original owner needs someone else to use their gun? Sometimes people even forget to take off the safety, I can't image what would happen with more hurdles to firing. I can see this being useful in cases where criminals shoot police officers with their own sidearm, but in other situations this doesn't sound like a smart idea. 67.85.137.135 21:39, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

United States- United States is a strong advocate of biometrics. As of 2005, it's moving to require biometric passport from its own and foreign citizens. The European Union has criticized it for causing unnecessary harm to civil liberties and privacy.

I don't think I need to say anything more. Recommended this article for copyediting. 67.162.225.236 02:42, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I would recommend that the phrase "in time and attendance systems" in the section on Hand and Finger Geometry be expanded to explain what a time system is and how it relates to fingerprint and hand recognition. The other examples listed are sufficiently clear based on the context, but this one could use clarification. 137.122.14.20 (talk) 17:16, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

This word is in use since the early XIX century, with a meaning close to "application of exact sciences methodology to biological sciences", and there are books and periodicals from that time to prove it (one famous example among statisticians is the magazine Biometrika).

It is bigger than human biometrics security systems, and bigger than biostatistics, because includes, for an instance, applying experimental planning methods developed for electronic engineering to agricultural experiments, studies of Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (a population genetics problem which may be posed in terms of proportions) and Ethology (in the sense used in The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, a science that although of biological nature, draws freely from Game Theory).

I agree that there should be a disambiguation page. This content should be on Biometrics_(Authentication) or Biometrics_(Information technology). References elsewhere to Biometrics which redirect to Biostatistics (e.g. in Biometrika) are chopping out an enormous branch of science. Unfortunately the IT nature of Wikipedia and the rest of the internet is slanting / biasing original definitions of topics towards recent/trendy/IT-related usages, so we might be fighting a losing battle here.
segurador (talk) 13:06, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

What about biological metrics that are not used for authentication? like heart rate: A metric that is collected by a biosensor; isn't that a bio-metric? Where would they fit? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.255.245.177 (talk) 09:38, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

yes, it is, now it is more complete. The old one was taken from a document who had cropped part of the original version, I have found the original document (see the reference) and I have copied from there. Alessio Damato(Talk) 13:25, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

[Semantics: this paragraph goes right from 1900 (the beginning of the 20th century) to 1999, without any intervening events, leading one to suspect the author meant the 21st century, when according to the reference at Dr. Vucetich, fingerprinted Brazilian ID cards existed before 1900]

century, Brazilian citizens have

[Syntax: Since/have?]

user ID cards. The decision by the Brazilian government to adopt fingerprint-based biometrics was spearheaded by Dr. Felix Pacheco at Rio de Janeiro, at that time capital of the Federative Republic. Dr. Pacheco was a friend of Dr. Juan Vucetich, who invented one of the most complete tenprint classification systems in existence. The Vucetich system was adopted not only in Brazil, but also by most of the other South American countries. The oldest and most traditional ID Institute in Brazil (Instituto de Identificação Félix Pacheco) was integrated at DETRAN [7] (Brazilian equivalent to DMV) into the civil and criminal AFIS system in 1999. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.39.198.126 (talk) 06:04, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

At present this article has a mixture of U.S and UK English, with occasional tussles over the odd word. My last attempt to harmonise/harmonize throughout was reverted. Any consensus as to which variant to use? Checking back, U.S. English has been the norm on this page. --Old Moonraker 21:05, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, trying again. This is just to achieve consistency through the article and not favoring one form of English over the other. --Old Moonraker 17:14, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Biometrics#Germany refers to a "gigital" photograph. This is the first time I've come across the phrase (and I don't want to fall into the WP:IDONTKNOWIT trap), but would a link or explanation be useful? It seems to apply to hi-res devices, so is it appropriate for this application at all? Or is it just a typo? --Old Moonraker 13:07, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd say it's an obvious typo; I have changed it to "digital". - Mike Rosoft 11:37, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Universality in Comparison of various biometric technologies table[edit]

Could someone please add a definition for the Universality column in the table? All the other fields are described, but I have no idea what that one means. 67.43.141.66 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 12:11, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Removed "Gordon Brown (The Prime Minister) has now given commercial sectors the go ahead for using biometric technology" from article, as not developing the article in a meaningful way. No reference given, but it may have been prompted by this piece of puffery from National Outsourcing Association (NOA), the UK’s trade association, dated two day ago. --Old Moonraker (talk) 14:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Parts of this article within the "Physiological" section are a lift from GlobalSecurity.org, here. Their page has been in existence since at least August 2005, (archived [1]) and the material here was added after that date. Any reason why I shouldn't prune it? --Old Moonraker (talk) 22:53, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

There are a few sections that are disproportionately long. I've moved the arguably notable research to an "emergent" section, but recommend that it be stricken or edited down to a single sentence per emergent technology. Biometric modalities should be discussed based upon deployment and robust research by many academics and professionals, not a limited number of academic research activities by one or a handful of individuals. A good rule of thumb is that if you're writing about a modality that isn't finger, face or iris, and your discussion is longer than theirs, the material is disproportionately long.

The technical sections of this article consist of a bit more than a stub, on top of which various contributers have pasted in abstracts and position papers for their pet projects. The description of the modalities needs strengthening, and the pet projects (cognitive and cancelable biometrics) need to be severely pruned, so that the widespread and accepted technologies receive the majority of discussion. I'll try to do that over the next few days, but it would help to have more veteran contributers check that I'm meeting a style and format appropriate for Wikipedia. 96.231.31.186 (talk) 10:14, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for taking this in hand: much-needed improvements. The opening paragraph is wrong ("refers to" is deprecated in WP:UMD, but the phrase was there before you started) and I will look at this, unless someone gets there first. --Old Moonraker (talk) 10:35, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, please keep watching my back! I'm intending to completely strike the two sections regarding brain science research. They are unrelated to any operational biometrics, and checking the edit log they appear to be part of an anonymous user's spam of their research abstracts into various tangentially related articles. I also pruned the cancellable biometrics section considerably - the section describes a theoretical construct that doesn't actually exist in any real form, and was written as a self-contained position paper. Realistically that section shouldn't warrant more than a sentence, but I don't want to rip out too much content.

What's the criteria for killing a section that doesn't belong? Given that two paragraphs of incomprehensible semi-english were in the middle of an unrelated section, it doesn't look like we have enough biometric experts here to get much of a consensus. Is it okay to kill things that don't belong in my judgement? Do I have to justify my credentials in some way here? Drc500free (talk) 10:50, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

The basis for the decision to delete the material is verifiability. If there isn't a reliable source it can go. If it's a fine call, the section could be marked with an {{unreferencedsection}} tag and left for a while to see if some decent references from independent, notable sources can be found.

It helps immensely to have a knowledgeable editor, but it follows that because everything is, in theory, transparently verifiable qualifications are absolutely not a requirement to contribute: the material stands or falls by the quality of its sources. --Old Moonraker (talk) 11:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. What is it that has to be verified, though? One can certainly verify that a handful of academic research has been performed, but you can't verify that it has any impact on biometrics in practice. For instance, I could add a section to the article on automobiles discussing cognitive research on a system that can differentiate between thinking "left" and "right," stating that it's relevant because such a system could arguably be used to steer a car, and anyone could verify that the research has in fact been performed. ....

I agree about the cognitive research -- it does not belong here -- maybe a separate article, "Cognitive performance biometrics" could be created (along with a tag questioning if it's notable enough to be here at the top) and then linked to in the "See also" section. Or at very least, the section should be dramatically shortened. The vast majority of work in biometrics, as the word is commonly used, does not have anything to do with it -- so it shouldn't make up such a large portion of the article. Jrtayloriv (talk) 19:22, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone else think that the last part in the introduction about the placement of the word 'voice' in the behavioural section a little bit unnecessary? Perhaps someone could put a short explanation in brackets next to 'voice' as it appears in the text instead? Nawalani (talk) 00:38, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

A red link in the see also section is associated with the following info....[edit]

Concerning: It contains too many quotations for an encyclopedic entry.[edit]

Possibly, however it is important to accurately convey the motivation of those driving biometric adoption. If the number of quotes are reduced, the original message behind those drivers should be retained. I'm interested to hear your thoughts 84User. Benjamin Gittins (talk) 12:37, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

The quotes are not notable, and including them here is a violation of WP:DUE. There is plenty to write about this subject without having a dozen non-notable lengthy block quotes. Basically, this entire page needs to be re-written, preferably using scholarly literature, since plenty of it exists for this topic. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 14:44, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I have been editing this page as time permits and just noticed that the lead section splits biometric characteristics into 'physiological' and 'behavioral'. I have no problem with the latter category but I think that physical is a preferable term for the former. A while ago I added a citation for this part of the page (using one of Jain et al's texts) but, in retrospect, it isn't accurate because they discuss "the identity of an individual based on the physical, chemical or behavioral attributes of the person", and not physiology. Later in that same text there is reference to only "physical or behavioral characteristics". At any rate, I could find no reference to support the use of 'physiological' at all and was tempted to simply change it to 'physical' but thought it might be better to discuss it before changing the information. Anyone care to comment? — RB Ostrum. 18:02, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

In response to your comment, I came across an article by Weaver (2006) where the term 'physiological' is used to describe the second category of biometric characteristics. This is the reference:

I personally think the term 'physiological' has the connotation of pertaining to the biological function of parts of the body, whereas 'physical' is a more general reference to the body. For the purposes of this article, I agree with you and think that the term 'physical' might be more appropriate. Biometric authentication doesn't really measure the function of someone's iris, just its physical characteristics.
Nawalani (talk) 00:21, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be beneficial for the article to add some information about the accuracy of measuring different biometric characteristics. For instance, I have read that, since iris scans have more degrees of freedom, they have the potential to be more accurate than fingerprint scans (Weaver, 2006). I would also like to add data on the FAR's and FRR's of behavioural and physical characteristics. What does everyone think?
Nawalani (talk) 00:32, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi everyone, I made some edits to the introduction in order to add more information about the concept of biometrics. I also attempted to make the writing flow more coherently, as it has been tagged as having the characteristics of a list and may benefit from being presented in prose. In the process, I also added two more citations from academic sources. Finally, I moved the comment at the end of the previous version of the introduction about voice recognition under note 2, as I felt that it did not fit with the scope of the article.
Nawalani (talk) 23:45, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

This should be named biomettics(Authentication), since biometrics is a branch of biostatistics that has little to do with what is said here, and has existed for decades before the arrival of biometrics as an authentication scheme. The article even has a link on top to the journal of biometrics, that is not about anything said in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.166.8.164 (talk • contribs) 16:57, 29 Oct 2013 (UTC)

"Biometrics refers to metrics related to human characteristics Biometrics authentication (or realistic authentication) is used in computer science as a form of identification and access control."

Then the third chapter mentions the following:

"Since biometric identifiers are unique to individuals, they are more reliable in verifying identity than token and knowledge-based methods"

Being biometric or non-biometric doesn't make a difference in reliability (other than being "longer/complex passwords"). It is the authentication process itself making this difference. You have a process checking that the "password" is coming from a real person, not from stored data from *prior* scans or a copy of such process.

Then, about "Cancelable biometrics":

"One advantage of passwords over biometrics is that they can be re-issued."

In the Performance section it appears: "This increases the FAR, which thus...", was this supposed to be "FMR (false match rate)" ? or is it "False Acceptance Rate" which is a synonym to FMR ?
WurmD (talk) 15:18, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

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There are several comments in the discussion above (as it now stands) pointing out that biometrics is a branch of mathematical biology, and that its recent application to authentication is but a small sideshow of biometrics proper.

Biometric authentication (of sneaky humans) is properly of subset of biometric identification (automated surveillance and threat detection depends upon this broader concept), which has been practiced by human society in the non-human domain since the invention of hands and livestock, both of which fall under biometrics, the science.

There also a burgeoning field of biometrics applied to sports performance:

Does anybody here consider that the following content about Biometrics for Voter Registration and Voter Identification Draft:Biometric_voter_registration could go in this article? It is currently a draft. As I didn’t find such information in Wikipedia I decided to go for it, research and create the first version. I apologise if this is not the right place to ask for this. But I would like some of your opinions, as I am not sure whether this information would be worthier to be added in Biometrics, or should I rather try to add it in other articles such as Electronic_authentication or Voter Registration? or create a RfC? Any thoughts (and suggestions) would be very much appreciated! Thank you!E-DemSnoopy (talk) 17:42, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

UPDATE: The Biometric voter registration draft was accepted as a new WP article by its own Biometric voter registration, so I will only be linking both articles, instead of copying any content. Thanks!E-DemSnoopy (talk) 11:58, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

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This section seems to overwhelm the topic of biometrics to underscore people's fear of it from various aspects. There is a variety of slants on biometrics threat to civil liberties, but there is no balance to include the ways in which biometrics can be applied to protect civil liberties by making identity theft and impersonation more difficult. After reading the entire section in its entirety, it strikes me that the author is unreasonably paranoid, fearing government misuse, but not in fear of commercial misuse. Strange. I don't know how to fix it without rewriting the whole section.Wbaron (talk) 00:23, 25 September 2018 (UTC)